Executive Orders

Not real people, just royalty, and the family of the man sentenced to the presidency. Jack smiled, shook his head, and left the room. Agent Raman closed the door for him, not even letting POTUS do that. Somewhere else in the building, Ryan was sure, an electronic status board showed that the door had been opened and closed, probably sensors told that someone had entered the room, and probably someone had asked over the radio link the Service people used to be told that SWORDSMAN was tucking SANDBOX in.

He stuck his head in Sally's room. His elder daughter was similarly asleep, doubtless dreaming of some boy or other in her class—Ke

Another day shot to hell, the President thought. He turned to his bodyguard. "Night, Jeff."

"Good night, sir," Agent Raman said outside the door to the master bedroom. Ryan nodded his farewell to the man, and Raman waited for the door to shut. Then he looked left and right at the other Detail agents. His right hand brushed against the service pistol under his jacket, and his eyes smiled in a private way, knowing what might so easily have been. Word had not come back. Well, his contact was doubtless being careful, as well he should. Aref Raman had the duty tonight as supervisor for the Detail. He walked up the corridor, nodding to the agents on post, asked one i

"IS IT POSSIBLE to kidnap them?"

"The two older ones, no, too inconvenient, too difficult, but the youngest, that is possible. It could be both dangerous and costly," Movie Star warned.

Badrayn nodded. That meant picking especially reliable people. Daryaei had such people. That was obvious from what had taken place in Iraq. He looked over the diagrams in silence for a few minutes while his guest stood to look out the window. The demonstration was still under way. Now they were shouting "Death to America!" The crowds and the cheerleaders who organized them had long experience with that particular mantra. Then his intelligence man came back.

"What exactly," Movie Star asked, "is the mission, All?"

"The strategic mission would be to prevent America from interfering with us." Badrayn looked up. Us now meant whatever Daryaei wanted it to mean.

ALL NINE OF them, Moudi saw. He ran the antibody tests himself. He actually did each three times, and the tests were all positive. Every one of them was infected. For the sake of security, they were given drugs and fold that they'd be all right—as they would until it was determined that the disease had been transmitted in its full virulence, not attenuated by reproduction in the previous set of hosts. Mainly they were dosed with morphine, the better to keep them quiet and stuporous. So first Benedict Mkusa, then Sister Jean Baptiste, then ten criminals, and now nine more. Twenty-two victims, if one also counted Sister Maria Magdalena. He wondered if Jean Baptiste was still praying for him in Paradise and shook his head.

SOHAILA, DR. MACGREGOR thought, looking over his notes. She was ill, but she had stabilized. Her temperature had abated a whole degree. She was occasionally alert. He'd thought jet lag at first, until there had been blood in her vomit and stool, but that had stopped… Food poisoning? That had seemed the likely diagnosis. She'd probably eaten the same things as the rest of her family, but it could have been one bad piece of meat, or maybe she'd done what every child did, and swallowed the wrong thing. It happened literally every week in every doctor's office in the world, and was particularly common among the Western community in Khartoum. But she was from Iraq, too, just as Patient Saleh was. He'd rerun the antibody tests on the latter, and there was no doubt. The bodyguard fellow was gravely ill, and unless his immune system rallied itself—

Children, MacGregor remembered, somewhat startled by the co

Saleh had come from Iraq.

Sohaila had also come from Iraq.

Saleh had Ebola.

Sohaila showed symptoms of 'flu, or food poisoning, or— But Ebola initially presented itself as 'flu…

"My God," MacGregor breathed. He rose from his desk and his notes and walked to her room. Along the way he got a syringe and some vacuum tubes. There was the usual whining from the child about a needle, but MacGregor had a good touch, and it was all over before she was able to start crying, which problem he left to her mother, who'd slept overnight in the room.

Why didn 't I run this test before? the young doctor raged at himself. Damn.

"THEY ARE NOT officially here," the foreign ministry official told the health department official. "What exactly is the problem?"

"He seems to have Ebola virus." That got the other man's attention. His eyes blinked hard, and he leaned forward across his desk.

"Are you certain?"

"Quite," the Sudanese physician confirmed with a nod. "I've seen the test data. The doctor on the case is Tan Mac-Gregor, one of our British visitors. He's actually a fine practitioner."

"Has anyone been told?"